Katie Meadow

And a cheat and an all around pompous selfish human. No one protects his recipes like he does, not that I want them.

My MIL sent my husband to school with a peanut butter and mayo sandwich. Is it in there?

If I had to eat lunch on xmas day, parsnip air would be about all I could handle. That and a cup of tea.

Genuflect, genuflect, genuflect! My parents had all his albums. I've been pretty indecisive about what to have for xmas day dessert along with our pizzas....zabaglione? Pink peppermint ice cream with hot chocolate sauce? But now at least I know what to do for New Year's Eve: I will get some thulium and thallium and go out with a bang. Here's to the end of 2020!

Mediocre panettone is awfully easy to come by. It benefits from being toasted and buttered. If it needs further disguise you can make French toast or bread pudding. Yes, it's sweet. Yes, kids will like it.

With a name like Old Dutch I was expecting licorice flavor.

How do you get a semi-liquid egg out of the wok? I cook my egg first in the wok, like a thinnish pancake, remove as soon as it is removable,, cut into pieces, then add back at the very end.

I have no xmas day traditions. When I was little we had a closet xmas. And I do mean closet. My mother came from a Kosher household but she loved xmas tree glitter. My grandmother lived in our apartment building, so my mother would literally hide a small tinseled tree in the coat closet in case Grandma happened by. You wanted that homey xmas cheer? Look in the closet, among the raincoats and liquor supply. Xmas day was most likely a movie and Chinese. In college in New Mexico I had a boyfriend I always spent xmas eve with. He had a big family and their tradition was green chile burgers. Xmas day was always a free-for-all, one place or another. Once I settled in CA and met my husband to be every xmas eve was spent with his family and every year his mother made the most god-awful minestrone you can imagine. That's just what they did. To this day, forty years later, I have no idea if all the siblings and in-laws really liked it or just pretended. It was what it was. It wasn't in his family code to dislike anything out loud. Gift opening happened after dinner and it was interminable. Xmas day was still a wild card, since his parents traditionallly had other plans and all the sibs eventually married into families with their own xmas day traditions. When we had our daughter I was pressured to have a tree and presents on xmas morning. Not so bad. Xmas day was still a wild card. No traditional menu. Sometimes a movie, sometimes an invite, sometimes dinner in SF's famous crab restaurants, sometimes guests and coq au vin. This year it's just the two of us. I'm going to thrill my husband by recreating my NM xmas eve with green chile burgers. I haven't eaten beef in two years and he misses it. I miss it, or maybe I miss my old boyfriend from a zillion years ago; I really don't know and in the end it doesn't matter. Not any fuss so it's fine with me .Xmas morning will be lox and bagels. Xmas dinner will be home made pizzas, a variety: artichoke, radicchio-chard, and a plain margherita, or something of that ilk. He does the crust and the baking, I do the toppings. Again, not a lot of work for me, except, well, artichokes. Dessert is an unknown. Maybe I can talk my husband into making zabaglione....I like it warm....

We have been loyal to a local Viet restaurant. We used to eat there a couple times a month, now we take out about the same. As soon as my husband walks through the door they know our order. That's comforting, and so is the food. Our only other take-out these days is lox and bagels, also from one purveyor. Strange times, these are.

Home made cheese straws is an excellent gift, especially if you can find some square tins to pack them in. In simpler times, if such a thing existed, they were a great on-the-fly appetizer for drop-in guests and always better than commercial ones. That's probably not happening, but the recipients will have them all to themselves, so it's win win. Cheese straws and good olives and gin martinis. Sounds good right now and it's only noon here! Good too of course with a clementine shrub! Cheers! Much nicer than the overload of cookies that everyone suffers through. My intake of sweets has increased with the pandemic and now I'm pretty sick of them. I made a very nice apple cake recently and realized I just wasn't interested in eating much of it.

So.....are the Anson Mills benne seeds essentially an heirloom variety of sesame seeds but with hulls still on them? I did a quick little search and there a lot of contradictory information about them. The most complete explanation I could find implies that the benne plants that came from Africa were used in all stages of growth and that benne seeds refers to a younger stage with hulls still on them. These were then toasted and used, hulls and all. My understanding is that sesame seeds were the kernels of older plants that were typically (like now) sold hulled, dried and toasted. That's the best I could come up with. I'll be amazed if I got this right, frankly, but apparentlyy it's a confusing topic. @Chris Hennesare you toasting them before using? I checked out a few recipes for the traditional wafers and most of them say to toast the seeds, implying that if you buy true benne seeds they do not come toasted the way sesame seeds do. I'm so hoping you will make some wafers with your Anson Mills seeds and provide an assessment! Otherwise I might have to do it myself, but right now I can't get myself to mail order one single thing more.

Looked them up, as I've never heard of them. Grown in WA they are a cross between a Golden D and something called a Topaz, which doesn't ring a bell. They are supposed to be non GMO. I asked my husband, who does the shopping, if he's seen them, but he didn't think so. Our weekly (now bi-weekly) market in Berkeley usually has a good variety of apples. It could be they were there and he didn't notice or was focussing on the apples he knows. I don't like Golden D either, but this sounds interesting. If they are sold as far south as Bakersfield and as far east as @Kim Shookyou would think the Bay Area would have them on the shelves.

@Kim Shookmy xmas breakfast has been bagels and lox for years now. I'm not a person who gets up early and turns on the oven in the kitchen. Ever. Once in a blue moon where there's nothing that can be fed to the toaster I can get my husband to make popovers, as he finds it rather brainless and fast.

If you are looking for tasty cooked smoke ham you might try using smoked ham shank instead of hocks. Better meat and more of it after simmering to make a broth for two or three hours, or whatever you are making that needs the flavor of smoked meat. From one large shank, after cooking, I can get a couple of cups of torn meat without gristle or fat. In my experience the meat from a hock is meager and not as succulent and the broth it results in is the same, but fattier.

@Chris Hennes you are an unflappable soul with a high level of tolerance. I can't tell you how sick I am of seeing cookbooks or even recipes on line that just don't get edited carefully. Maybe the publishers are short-staffed, try to rush the book into production or hire editors who are not qualified but work for a pittance (of course everyone in publishing works for a pittance.). Or maybe the poor frazzled editors are forced to work with entitled chefs who don't meet their deadlines. I hope you got the book from the library and didn't have to buy it. I suspect that librarians generally are pretty patient people; if I had to witness the thousands of dog-eared pages in returned books every day I would be a screaming lunatic. With regards to that recipe, where do you buy benne seeds or for that matter cowpeas? I get that this book is full of regional recipes from various places, but it sounds like a lot of sourcing is involved for these meals. Does Norman OK have a population that supports that kind of shopping? Or do you mostly rely on mail ordering?

Bloody Mary with either edamame or Cheetos or both Bloody Mary with Gabrielle Hamilton's celery toast Martini and salted peanuts Dirty martini and roast almonds Gin and Tonic and chips w/salsa or just about anything else Ice cold vodka and caviar (okay, that one's been a while, but it doesn't get old in memory) Corpse Reviver and castelvetrano olives What an endless topic. And it should really be in a cocktail thread. Cheers!

If using only russets, and it seemed like there was a lot of potato starch, I might add half of it back in. If using half russets and half yukons I probably would all of it back in.

To be honest he creeps me out as a gingerbread man. But he would be creepier still as a jello man.

I remember the recipe being simpler, and specifying the use of both russet and yukons, grated together.

Thanks, yes I hate cleaning my blender as much as I hate using it. I'll read some Bamix reviews and see if anyone else chimes in here.

Amazing! Gobsmacked over your output and the fruitcakes' longevity. I'm going to crawl back into bed for a nap now.

The side of a mountain in Asia?

I swear by my Le Creuset 5.5 qt round dutch oven. It is in use at least two or three times a week for beans or soups. No doubt other brands of enamel coated cast iron work as well, but I particularly love this size. Does everyone love their Bamix? I've developed a hatred for my mediocre blender. So I'm considering asking for a Bamix for a gift. Would it smooth puree a potful of say leeks and potatoes, say in the volume of my Creuset? Oh, and while we are at it, which models are liked best? Pretty sure I'm not wanting to spend on deluxe or priciest models. Also not ready to spring for a high end blender like BlendTec or Vitamix. I've never owned a stick blender, so my knowledge of them is zilch.

If you do make those new genius latkes please do post the results with your usual stringent critique.

A million years ago Rachel Perlow came up with a recipe for latkes that used both russets and yukons. Very good. It's probably on eG somewhere.